


Love Lost

by lavellanpls



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, F/M, Heavy Angst, Multi, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:19:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9013993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavellanpls/pseuds/lavellanpls
Summary: A look back at all of Lavellan's lost loves, from her first to the bitter last.A response to the question: "Was Solas Lilith's first love?"





	

It was summer. She was sixteen.

Clan Lavellan was camped in the woods on the outskirts of the small town of Velun. Laurel was the daughter of a merchant. A human girl who looked like summer, warm and golden, with ribbons braided into her hair. She laughed behind her hand when Lilith haggled an exasperated shopkeeper down to half price for a ring while simultaneously pocketing a line of necklaces.

Lilith had to scurry to catch up when she left. She slowed into a backwards stroll just ahead of her. “They’re halla horn, you know.” She tapped a stolen pendant. “The little carvings. Which, if I had to briefly summarize it, is a really shitty thing to make jewelry out of. So, you know. It’s kind of cosmic justice at this point, right?”

Laurel laughed, and the brightness of her smile felt like sunshine. “Oh, no, I’m quite impressed. You’re very good with sleight of hand. Did that take long to learn?”

“Not as long as you’d think. Turns out people aren’t all that hard to befuddle and/or exasperate.”

“Well, it’s not as if he’ll suffer for it—did you know he sells those necklaces for five times what he buys them for? Not a lot of people know that. Merchant secret.”

“It’s almost my duty then, isn’t it? Plus, not to be _that_ person, but…” She pointed to one long ear. “That probably counts as some flavor of offensive. I mean, halla are kind of our whole deal, right? I feel like poaching them to carve little human-faces into them and slapping them on an overpriced necklace counts as some kind of sacrilege.”

The girl introduced herself as Laurel. She said their names matched. It was the loveliest thing Lilith had ever heard.

She handed over one of her stolen necklaces with a grin that wouldn’t stop creeping wider. “Here.”

“Didn’t we decide it was sacrilegious?”

“Nah, this is different. Old Dalish tradition. It’s customary to give a gift of halla horn to the prettiest girl in a crowd.” She winked. “Didn’t anyone tell you that?”

Laurel laughed, and Lilith was sure she’d do anything to hear that sound again.

They met up in the market every day after that. Lilith lost track of how many times. She had her first kiss in the dusty loft of Laurel’s father’s shop in the sleepy glow of late afternoon, the sun casting lines of gold through the shutters. Laurel had been playing piano since she was eleven. She’d play for her on rainy days when the market was damp and grey. Every time she missed a note she’d pause to curse, and Lilith would heave a dramatic, wistful sigh and say, “So graceful.”

It always made her laugh.

Summer simmered to an end, bright and quiet, and the slow decent into fall made Lilith careless. She shouldn’t have brought Laurel with her. Laurel was graceful and warm; she wasn’t a thief. She wasn’t bad.

They snuck into a private courtyard through a lockpicked gate. Lilith pressed a finger to her lips and shushed through a giggle, her grin devious, and motioned for her to follow. Laurel was smiling. She was never supposed to be a criminal. The guards spotted them as they dashed away through a line of hedges.

They fired an arrow. Laurel fell. There was too much blood.

Lilith never returned to Velun. In the reflection of every shop window she saw the phantom of a smile like sunshine and too much blood. Too much awful blood.

Her heart had never broken before. She still wonders if it’ll ever stop.

 

* * *

 

She was seventeen. She thought it was love. It wasn’t.

He had such lovely eyes. Blue like the deepest mountain lakes. He offered promises of understanding, sweet assurances that played like music. He was sweet until he wasn’t.

Spring cracked and froze over with a shock like falling through the ice. Love did not do what he did. There was no love here.

She bashed until he had no face left to hate. Until those deep blue eyes filled with blood. She took his hands with her when she left. No one would ever feel their touch again. No one would ever be fooled into feeling loved by him.

He would never take that from someone again.

 

* * *

 

It was fall. She was eighteen. She hadn’t been back home for a year.

The twins arrived only days after. Brother and sister, mages, traded from a neighboring clan with too many Templar eyes on their back. Her name was Marin. A fox-faced girl with keen eyes and a mass of curly hair piled high atop her head.

She and Lilith would steal off together in the thick haze before sunset and smoke in the woods. Marin was the one who taught her how to carve a pipe out of an apple. Lilith taught her the finer points of skipping rocks across a pond. Sometimes they didn’t return to camp until long after nightfall, the smell of stolen wine still on their breath, shushing each other through waves of giggles. Sometimes they snuck in unnoticed. More often they didn’t. They got many a stern talking to from their Keeper—dire warnings of safety, and exhausted reprimands. They never listened.

It was late. Lilith didn’t think.

She crossed paths with a band of soldiers marching through a nearby town, and couldn’t hold her tongue. Someone made a comment—some lewd, leering quip—and Lilith said something she shouldn’t have. She hit someone she shouldn’t have hit.

It was late. She didn’t think.

They came at night. The soldiers she shouldn’t have fought. They brought mages. Marin didn’t make it out of the line of fire.

Lilith can still hear her scream, sometimes. Can still see her Keeper running to her side and reaching for her scorched face, only for flesh to come back with her shaking hand.

She never got the sight back in her left eye. She’d always had such beautiful eyes. Lilith couldn’t see the scars without feeling flames beneath her fingernails. She burned everything she touched. She only ever burned.

It was winter. She was eighteen. She left without saying goodbye.

 

* * *

 

It was autumn in Antiva.

She was the most beautiful woman Lilith had ever seen. She went by “Elisa.” Lilith always called her El.

They made up poems that didn’t rhyme beneath the fall-chilled shade of a sycamore tree. The sinking sun set the leaves ablaze in a fading glow of pink. El pressed a golden locket into Lilith’s hands and whispered stuttering confessions of adoration. She called her “love.” She promised love.

They stopped talking. Lilith never did know why. Maybe it was little things all stacked together, or maybe it was just…her. Maybe she did this to herself, because beautiful girls with love on their lips did not deserve to burn.

She gave the locket away to a merchant in Treviso. It didn’t make her feel better.

 

* * *

 

She’d just turned twenty-two.

He was soft. So soft.

He had a half-blind Mabari mutt named Emma who was sweet as pie. She liked to wedge herself between them in bed, and he would grumble slurred curses into his pillow every morning while she licked the side of his face and Lilith laughed teasing encouragements. He told his parents about Lilith. He wanted her to meet them. That…had never happened before. Lilith kind of liked how it felt.

They were arguing one day. He grabbed Lilith by the shoulders and pushed, and she hit the ground hard with a jarring _crack._

He didn’t mean to do it. Really, he swore.

She broke three of his ribs and fractured four. Broke his nose. His cheekbone. Three fingers. She didn’t remember all of what happened—only that she fell, and leapt, and heard the rush of blood in her ears and then a scorching roar.

_“You will not lay hands on me.”_

She never did meet his parents.

She wished he was still soft.

 

* * *

 

It was too long ago. She felt so old. Too old.

Lilith liked her accent. She liked how she held hope near and willed it to endure. But death comes regardless of hope.

Lilith doesn’t speak of her anymore.

 

* * *

 

It was a dark time.

He was wrong for her. He was wrong about a lot of things. She loved him anyway. Loved his passion, and drive, and how much he loved mangy, unlovable things. She loved his magic, his _spirit,_ and he swore he loved her, too.

She didn’t think they would end as wrong as they did. She didn’t think about a lot of things.

He said he loved her, that she was beautiful and clever, but he had drive, and commitments, and promises to keep. And Lilith was just…too much. Too difficult. Too distracting. She would never matter most. She wondered if she ever really mattered at all.

She promised she’d come back to him, but of course she never did. Lilith never went back to anything.

 

* * *

 

It was winter. She was old enough to know better.

_“My name is Solas, if there are to be introductions.”_

He was a mage. He always looked her in the eyes when she talked. He liked when they talked.

They spoke of heroes and spirits. Of magic. Morality. She asked and he answered, argued, debated, explained, and hours would slip by without them realizing. Lilith had so many stories to tell, and he had so many to trade. Discussions felt like dares. Challenges to see who would fall first; who would open, share more than an equal exchange. Who would let themselves be seen first.

Days were winding games of vague motives and non-answers, neither open, neither ever completely honest, but nights were warm and close. Intimate, in ways she rarely allowed herself to be. He drank in affection like a dying man in a desert oasis, at once both euphoric and starving. Lilith had so much affection to give. It felt perfect. Everything felt so perfect.

He left, in the end. One of them always did. This time he just beat her to it.

 

* * *

 

It was too soon. She made a mistake.

They’d been through so much together. Had _seen_ so much together. It was the end of the world and then it wasn’t, and in the frigid stillness after the fall Cullen kissed her and she felt warmth stir in the hollow cavern of her chest. His touch felt so soft. So sweet.

Sweetness never lasted, though. Nothing stayed soft after she touched it. She hardened, and froze, and the rot crept in like frost until his fingers were ice on her skin and all their sweetness turned bitter. She should have known. Maybe part of her did. The pedestal he’d placed her on crumbled into rubble, and whatever love they had was buried under the dust.

Sometimes she looks at him from across the war table and feels an awful, sinking hatred. She’s never sure who it’s for.

 

* * *

 

It was spring. She called her “Inky.”

It wasn’t her fault. Lilith should have told her. Lilith should have done so many things. She loved Sera but she should have warned her, should never have fooled her into thinking what they had would be forever. Nothing Lilith held ever lasted forever. Nothing about her would amount to anything but blood and dust.

She shattered Sera just by touching her. Turned her to ice like every poor soul she dragged under. She wanted a home, and a family, and love that would heal, and Lilith let her want even while knowing she could never give it. She should have warned her. She should have talked to her. She shouldn’t have left her on her knees in the dirt sobbing curses and pleas.

Lilith should have done so many, many things.

“I’m not mad, you know,” she said. Nearly a year later and Sera still said it. “You and me, we’re still good, yeah? Nothing’s different.”

It was, though. It always was.

Sera never looked at her the same again.

 

* * *

 

It had been two years since she’d seen his face. Since he left like everyone else. She still remembered warm nights and perfect mornings. She wished she didn’t.

_“I suspect you have questions.”_

He called her “my love.” Lilith wished she knew how to explain that that word meant death, that this was not comfort but disaster invoked like a witch’s curse.

She still loved him. She still loved so many of them.

She wishes she could purge love from her heart and feel nothing.


End file.
